genuine question from atheist - view on Christanity and personal responsibility

[kentishgirl]

Hi - promise this isn't just Christian-baiting.

I've come to the conclusion that Christianity is a substitute for having a personal conscience or taking personal responsibility. Being a Christian is like having a 'get out of jail free card' in that you are taught God will forgive you anything. So you can do anything, as bad as you like, go and pray for forgiveness and move on, slate wiped clean, feeling great about yourself. So it doesn't matter if you do wrong. As an atheist, if I do something wrong, it's always with me, it's always on my conscience, so that makes me always try to do the right thing.
I didn't always think this way. It's the only way I can make any sense of something that happened to me at the hands of a couple of serious, committed Christians. One of them even works full time for a church. They did something terrible to me but have shown no remorse, no guilt, and made no attempt to make things right with me. I'm positive they prayed for guidance at the time and then forgiveness afterwards, and now all's good in their world, while I'm still dealing with the fall-out.
Am I really wrong in interpreting Christianity in this way? Isn't it true that it enables horrible behaviour by teaching you that if you do wrong, all you've got to do is pray for forgiveness afterwards, and you are ok, never mind the effect of what you did? Basically if God is your only judge, and forgiveness is guaranteed, it gives you permission to act like a right bastard as long as you say sorry to God afterwards? there's no personal responsibility for what you have done.

BigDorrit, nobody is trying to justify the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children; nobody is saying it is anything less than appalling and obscene. That's what Isaiah thinks, too -- he's warning the Babylonians, full of horror of what he thinks is coming to them.

Isaiah sees everything as God's work so the fact that the Babylonians will be attacked is because they have been sinful, completely, unrepentantly sinful. But he doesn't mean that it is God who would actually be doing the killing it is human beings. One of the major themes of the prophetic books is to interpret political events on the larger stage of the Ancient Middle East in terms of God's relationship with his people Israel. At a later stage, for example, Cyrus set the Jews free from their captivity in Babylon because it was his policy to set up client states in his empire. But the Jewish prophets saw this as Cyrus enacting God's purposes, because they had a theological view of the workings of history.

So the wars and conflicts detailed in the first part of Isaiah are seen as God's purpose working through human beings. And, of course, we have to remember that the Hebrew Bible tells the story of a small nation occupying a strategically important bit of land without very much in the way of military power or natural resources. The position of Israel was constantly insecure, and much of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament narrates Israel's struggle to hold onto hope in desperate circumstances. What they did was to understand the vicissitudes of their history in terms of their status as a convenant people, and to see their ups and downs as a result of their own lack of faithfulness to the God who had promised to be faithful to them.

I do find these passages very disturbing and difficult, and have to struggle with them. But they are not the whole story. I did a search recently on 'love' and 'hate' in the Old Testament and mentions of love outnumber those of hate more than 5 to 1.

cups you could be talking about any god because all religions have followers who feel every bit as convinced as you, more so in fact. None of you have any evidence, all of you just blow hot air about how super extra scary your flavour of god is.

The fool says in his heart there is no god, the wise man says it out loud.

I sometimes feel exasperated at the justifications but I did it too when I was a Christian and was every bit as moral as I am now so it's not as worrying as it seems. When I started questioning it was reading message boards like this where I got to see the logic played out and which eventually helped me tunnel my way out from 30 years of Christianity.

I don't feel the need to threaten my husband in any way to try to keep him faithful to me, that would strike me as abusive, manipulative and suggest I had a personality disorder (or was just very immature). If I need to make him faithful then maybe we shouldn't be together. If the thought of him loving someone else makes me so angry I probably need to be single and work on my own control issues.

"Context, people, context!"

Should read "Cherries, people, cherries!"

"You could speak til the end of time but can never get over the facts"

Well that's just the problem isn't it, you don't have any facts. Any sane reasonable god knows this. And knows that the most reasonable position to take is one of unbelief. I can't believe in the existence of your god without good reason. Would you want me to believe in a different god without good reason? Of course not. So you can understand my position.

CasualCobra Should read "cherries, people, cherries!"

How ironic that my post about context has been twisted and made to mean something completely opposite!

Where else does that happen, do you think?

head
I wouldn't be so sure you are without a god though. I wrote this on another thread and think it is quite apt:

Belief and value systems are not confined to Christians, though. A belief or value system can be built around whatever is deemed of utmost importance in life, whatever is revered. Thus whatever is deemed of utmost importance or revered becomes a 'god' in the belief / value system.

Atheists are not immune in this, they have god(s) in all but name.

So what do you revere?

Talking of cherries, if you have a tree, which I do, you don't pick the sour ones off first to eat. You eat the sweet ones and once you have eaten all those the sour ones have ripened.

I wouldn't get rid if my tree either, because some of the cherries take longer to ripen than others. The cherries make a delicious crumble!

^of. typo.

Capsium, I know your question was not directed to me, but I will answer anyway.

I don't revere anything. I have respect for others but not reverence. I respect the social value systems we have, but I don't revere them. THey are flawed, as are people, but everyone deserves dignity and voice. But that isn't reverence.

atthestroke interesting...that is how I view all else, apart from God and I view God through Christ.

Before I pursued my Christian belief though I felt I was in need of hierarchy. As I said earlier on in this thread I felt I could argue my way in or out of almost anything. I was becoming too Post Modern and relativist in my way of thinking and it didn't sit comfortably with me, at all. Analysis paralysis is not comfortable, neither is knowing how, as human beings the sheer diversity in our brain physiology can alter the very way we define human kind. The fact that psychologists are seriously beginning to argue we have no free will, and can back this up with evidence of how differences in brain physiology changes our understanding and behaviour, is deeply uncomfortable.

I am thankful I can be free in Christ, that He can heal us. Brain plasticity and the metastability of gene expression means this freedom makes sense in terms of physical phenomenon too. However without God, the range of environmental factors available to affect positive results are mind boggling to me (ref relativist tendencies explained above).

I have never felt the need for "hierarchy", in fact it is one of the aspects of religion that repels me.

I also enjoy finding meaning in narrative:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl8Sll089c8

^ one of my favourite folk tales.

I understand your position headinhands, but you have taken some wrong turnings.
I was wondering what turned you away from God, I suspected it might have been forums.
Which is part the reason I am on here tbh.

I missed an interesting point upthread.

spirits.
There is the Holy Spirit. Our enabler. Our helper. Our encourager etc.

And bad spirits. Very bad ones. That enter some people.

atthestrokeoftwelve
I have never felt the need for "hierarchy", in fact it is one of the aspects of religion that repels me.

The thing about hierarchy is that it has a function in our society. But it is widely abused and that is the aspect of hierarchy that most people resist (quite rightly so).

However, it does has a necessary function.

hi·er·ar·chy [hahy-uh-rahr-kee, hahy-rahr-] Show IPA
noun, plural hi·er·ar·chies.
1.
any system of persons or things ranked one above another.

If you have a brain tumour, you want the brain neurosurgeon to undertake your 12 hour operation and not even his registrar, much less his trainee, don't you?

If you have a valid complaint ignored, you take it to the "next level up" until you read the top of the ladder, sometimes this means the managing director or equivalent.

If your child is bullied at school, and the bully's parents condone it, but you've got no where with the class teacher, you visit the Head teacher.

All of this is hierarchy and has its rightful place.

However, like I said, there are some who have abused their status and given hierarchy a bad name. I don't like that any more than you do. It is entirely appropriate to resist such abuse.

Interestingly, the BBC recognise hierarchy is an important function in the animal <a class="break-all" href="//kingdom.www.bbc.co.uk/nature/adaptations/Dominance_hierarchy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">kingdom.www.bbc.co.uk/nature/adaptations/Dominance_hierarchy So perhaps this could be seen as evidence for God creating order which involved hierarchy for a good reason. And of course, if you don't believe God exists anyway, you are surely more likely to accept hierarchy since it is evident in the natural world/animal kingdom?

BigDorrit Sun 06-Apr-14 10:51:48
I was quite happy when Osama Bin Laden died.
How do you think he died. Peacefully in his sleep? Of course not , he was terrorised in his house, with his family around him, and died at gunpoint. He was killed violently. Or one could say it was slaughter...

slaugh·ter [slaw-ter] Show IPA
noun
2.
the brutal or violent killing of a person.

However, I did not order them to be slaughtered, nor that their children be dashed to pieces before their eyes.
It was prophetic remember. A warning of what was going to happen. A description of warfare depicted in exactly the same way they typically fought their battles back then.

Trying to make some comparison between me and your barbaric book is ridiculous to a rather staggering extent.
I've already explained that God isn't barbaric, see yesterday's post.

BigDorrit Sun 06-Apr-14 10:54:30

But surely if he is God, then he can order them to do it in a different way? Or even force them.
Suddenly decided to remove free will? Seriously?

And this is one of the worst attempts at justifying slaughtering children that I have ever witnessed? Do you honestly tell that to yourself? And believe it? You conveniently didn't actually answer the question yourself though.

BigDorrit
And they're trying to find ways to twist it so that it sounds to them like their god is still the pink fluffy one they'd have us believe he is, and not the savage murderous one we see.

God is certainly a God of judgement, but also a God of mercy. I've already explained that.

BigDorrit
"All of this is hierarchy and has its rightful place." Yes. That doesn't mean we worship it though.

That's good, because we're not asked to worship hierarchy.